Nation of Cowards? No, But...

Eric Holder, the first African American to serve as Attorney General, may have been guilty of a poor choice of words when he said that America is "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race, says Roger Wilkins, history professor at George Mason University and the first African American to be appointed to a senior-level position at the Justice Department during the Johnson administration. But Holder is right that the nation has a lot of unfinished work on racial matters, Wilkins says—and the controversy surrounding a recent racist cartoon in the New York Post is just the latest proof.